Break-Even Calculator

A break-even point is the exact spot where a business stops losing money on a product and starts making it: the number of units you need to sell so that total revenue exactly equals total cost, with nothing left over as profit and nothing lost. This calculator takes three numbers, your fixed costs, your variable cost per unit, and your price per unit, and instantly works out both the break-even unit count and the break-even revenue that goes with it.

The math behind it is straightforward once you see it laid out. Each unit sold brings in its price, but also costs you its variable cost, so the difference between the two, called the contribution margin, is what actually goes toward paying off your fixed costs. Break-even units is simply fixed costs divided by that contribution margin: Fixed Costs ÷ (Price Per Unit − Variable Cost Per Unit). Multiply that unit count by the price per unit and you get break-even revenue, the dollar figure your sales need to reach before you're in profit.

Fixed costs are the expenses that don't change no matter how many units you sell, things like rent, salaries, insurance, and software subscriptions. Variable cost per unit is whatever it costs you to produce or deliver a single additional unit, materials, packaging, a per-transaction fee. Price per unit is simply what you charge. If your price per unit is lower than or equal to your variable cost per unit, there's no contribution margin left to pay off fixed costs, so no break-even point exists at any sales volume, and the calculator tells you so directly instead of showing a meaningless negative or infinite number.

Every figure updates live as you type, with no "Calculate" button to press. Alongside the two headline results, the calculator also shows your contribution margin per unit and your contribution margin ratio (that margin expressed as a percentage of price), both useful on their own for pricing decisions. Every calculation runs as plain JavaScript directly in your browser, so nothing you type about your costs or pricing is ever sent to a server, logged, or stored anywhere.